COVER- Making an eXXXample: Staunton porn shop sparks crackdown

The opening of After Hours Video in October netted eight felony obscenity charges for its owner, and passage of two anti-pornography ordinances by the Staunton City Council. The Augusta County Board of Supervisors is considering a similar law pending the Planning Commission's approval.PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

In his 1776 manifesto, The Wealth of Nations, economist Adam Smith promoted a marketplace unregulated by government, largely based on the belief that when consumers are free to buy things they want from merchants, the relationship is mutually beneficial because "We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love."

Over 230 years later, government, in the form of a prosecutor in Staunton, is cracking down on a merchant who sells a product the Commonwealth's Attorney finds "cheap, animalistic, and wrong." However, this time, a different sort of "self-love" is at issue.

A new adult video store has set off a powder keg of outrage that has divided the town, and resulted in the indictment of the store's owner on eight felony obscenity counts that could net a total of 80 years in prison.

Is pornography protected under the First Amendment? The law doesn't say, but soon 12 Valley residents could decide the future of a billion-dollar industry.

***

If the arrival of an adult video store has changed Staunton, it isn't evident at a glance. From small downtown boutiques and restaurants to the quiet stoicism of landmarks like the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Mary Baldwin College and the green expanses of Gypsy Hill Park, everything still brims with small-town charm. Even on Springhill Road on the outskirts of town where the store is located, icons of Americana like little white houses, a tiny gas station, and a brick church dot the rolling landscape.

Blink and you miss the porn. With its freshly paved parking lot, brick storefront, and sign with a grinning man-in-the-moon logo inviting motorists to check out "DVDs, magazines, novelties," After Hours Video could easily be mistaken for something innocuous. The only outward indications of what's inside are the opaque windows and the "must be 18 years of age or older to enter" sign on the door.

The interior looks much like any video store– except for a little more exposed flesh on the movie posters, and titles like I Dream of Jenna (Jameson) and The Morgan Sex Project instead of I Dream of Jeannie and The Blair Witch Project.

Make no mistake, though. There's nothing discreet about the merchandise.

The DVD cases depict men and women with genitals in full view, and engaged in all manner of sex acts, some of which push the limits of anatomical possibility. The novelty display does include such kitschy fare as fuzzy handcuffs and edible underwear, but also less polite items like a hand-operated pump that's purported to give "the perfect b***job," and a sex toy about the size of a wine bottle.

Just who's buying these sorts of products?

"Young people, old people, middle-aged people, men, women, doctors, lawyers, everybody," says a cashier who would only identify himself as "Tom."

The customers who came in during the Hook's recent afternoon visit to After Hours were not stereotypical porn purchasers. They were almost exclusively women, except for one man who took his turn inside the store after his wife perused the offerings and then left to keep an eye on the two toddlers strapped in the back of their minivan. Most patrons bypassed the videos in favor of the other, more giggle-inducing products.

"Our sales are probably even between videos and toys," says Tom, "but everything in here sells."

Ask Tom about the obscenity indictments against his boss, Manassas-based businessman Rick Krial (who refuses to comment to the media before the trial), and you'll get an earful.

"There will never be a legitimate adult business that will carry anything illegal," Tom says. "These people make money, and they're not going to jeopardize it because some perverts want to watch some sick s***. Everything we sell is completely legal."

Krial was Tom's landlord in Fredericksburg, and he convinced Tom to relocate to the Valley when he told him he was opening After Hours in Staunton. Tom finds it hard to believe anyone who's actually met Krial could think of him as Public Enemy #1.

While After Hours just opened in October and Tom hasn't been around Staunton long, he says he's seen enough to know that Staunton has bigger problems than their arrival with pornography.

"We just had a violent robbery over at the Stonewall Jackson Hotel; a young boy just got shot downtown; the 7-11 got robbed; there's a big meth problem here. I saw six homeless guys huddled on one street corner the other night," he says, "and yet this prosecutor says he wants to go after porn."

But if porn is as big an issue as some are making it, Tom thinks what he does is actually part of the solution.

"I check the ID of anyone who looks even close to 18 [including this reporter], and nobody can see anything from the outside," says Tom. "If you want porn from a video rental place with a back room, you've got to walk past kids renting Dumbo."

The Hook also made a trip to another shop near Staunton's Colonial Mall called Backstage Video, and found that it carries much the same type of X-rated movies and gadgets, but with nobody checking ID at the door and nothing to prevent anyone underage from entering. However, several signs do warn "Proof of age required for purchases and rentals."

So far, no indictments have been handed down against Backstage Video.

That could stem from the fact that Backstage, on Route 250, is just outside the Staunton city limits. In the city, Staunton Commonwealth's Attorney Ray Robertson wields the prosecutorial power, and he has strong contentions about pornography.

"It increases prostitution, pimping, sexual deviation, teenage pregnancy," says Robertson. "People who watch that stuff sometimes turn to child molestation, it desensitizes rape as a crime, it undermines family values, it brings an influx of people into the community who may be undesirable, it increases traffic in illegal drugs, and it's an attack on the basic dignity of man."

Robertson insists that the fervor with which he's going after After Hours doesn't make him a right-wing crusader. He's a lifelong Democrat, he chaired the local party for 12 years, believes in "liberal causes" like curtailing global warming, and says that while he's no fan of dirty movies, he does enjoy the muckraking documentaries of Michael Moore. He even says that he respects Hugh Hefner.

"I would never go after Playboy," says Robertson. "Jimmy Carter gave them an interview. I've been a fan of Gahan Wilson's cartoons since the '60s. Look at the political and artistic value there."

"Political and artistic value" are key words when it comes to defining obscenity in the eyes of the law. The final word on the matter remains the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Miller v. California. In order for a jury to find that speech is obscene– and thus unprotected by the First Amendment– it must meet three criteria: "a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by state law, and c) whether the work taken as a whole lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."

Although the very same movies After Hours sells are available for purchase elsewhere in Virginia, and in every home with an Internet connection, Robertson believes that once a Staunton jury applies "contemporary community standards" he will ace "the Miller test."

"I'm going after things that are just one wretched sex scene after the next," he says. "I'm going after things like double penetrating women, slamming them in both orifices, multiple strangers ejaculating on the faces of women. That's what these movies are about. They have no artistic value, and I'd be hard pressed to find a jury around here not to find that obscene."

However, in his 20 years of experience at the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, executive director Kent Willis says that his organization– which has defended everyone from nude dancers in Shenandoah County to a Richmond art gallery with naked gay men in its window– has never lost an obscenity case.

"The Supreme Court made obscenity hard to prove on purpose, because they understood that every guilty verdict in an obscenity case takes a piece out of the First Amendment," Willis says. "The Court didn't want government, particularly prosecutors, imposing its view on individuals."

Willis adds that in the jury room, just as in the video store, there's no accounting for taste.

"It's hard to convince 12 people something is obscene," he says. "With what a lot of people consider to be pornographic, some of it is obscene and some of it is not. There are no exact guidelines."

But if what's considered obscene in Staunton might also be obscene in Augusta County, or in nearby Waynesboro, or further west in Harrisonburg, why aren't there more obscenity indictments in the Shenandoah Valley?

While Charlottesville's history includes the spectacle of a 1980s porn prosecution against a shop called the Pleasure Chest, the 2002 opening of Ultimate Bliss on Angus Road raised eyebrows but netted* no arrests.

"I've worked with city officials to make sure everything we do is approved, and look at how long we've stayed in business," says owner Greg Sakas. "Nothing we do is illegal."

Sakas, who operates 12 other stores, thinks Charlottesville officials appreciate his carding policy as well as the subdued appearance of his shop, which was previously home to Reines Jewelers.

"I guess the question is," says Sakas, "with murder, and rape, and everything else, what do you think police need to be concentrating on?" He volunteers that he has been embroiled in legal challenges in Suffolk and in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.

"Prosecutors usually have much higher priorities," says the ACLU's Willis.

"I agree that I have bigger fish to fry, and I fry those fish everyday," prosecutor Robertson counters. "Most of what I deal with are gangs and drugs. I've got a rape jury trial coming up. I've been a prosecutor since 1971, and I know how to prioritize things. Of the four attorneys in this office, I'm the only one working on this case."

Robertson says he's just trying to do his part in prosecuting pornographers who, in recent years, haven't faced strict enforcement of the Supreme Court's 34-year-old standard.

"In the 1970s and '80s, we got quick and routine convictions," he says. "But when Janet Reno became attorney general, she dismantled the obscenity task force within the Department of Justice. Then, in the mid-'90s, the Internet explosion came, and companies like DirecTV and Comcast started offering this stuff, and it gave it an air of legitimacy because the federal government wasn't prosecuting it."

In 2001, it seemed to Robertson as if changes in Washington might reverse the trend.

"When President Bush was elected and John Ashcroft became attorney general, they started up the obscenity task force again," he says, "but then 9/11 happened, and the Department had to shift all their people to terrorism."

Since Robertson doesn't have to look for Al-Qaeda in the Queen City, he says he has the chance to pick up the slack for the feds. But if Robertson hopes to strike a blow for obscenity enforcement in this case, he'll have to do it against a formidable legal foe.

***

Name a cultural icon who has horrified parents and angered social conservatives over the last 30 years, and odds are pretty good that Paul Cambria has been that celebrity's attorney. He made his name defending Larry Flynt when the Hustler publisher first faced obscenity charges in Ohio in the '70s. Since then, Cambria has advocated on behalf of such shock shillers as androgynous rocker Marilyn Manson and gangsta rapper DMX. In addition to Flynt, Cambria also continues to represent most of the other major American porn producers, such as Vivid Video, VCA, and Wicked Pictures.

So integral is Cambria to what he calls the "adult entertainment" business, that when it looked as if the new right-leaning Bush administration might clamp down on his clients, he drew up a list of sex acts to omit in order to avoid prosecution. Since then, the "Cambria List" has provoked debate within the porn industry and even snagged the attention of the PBS documentary series Frontline.

Now he has taken the case of Rick Krial and After Hours Video. What brings a big city lawyer like Cambria to Staunton?

"Anytime an adult's ability to make a choice is on the line, it's worth it to lend whatever competency you have," he says.

Some have wondered how well his slicked-back hair and tailored suits will go over with a jury in a historically conservative city, but Cambria says he already feels right at home.

"It reminds me very much of where I grew up, in a small town called Fredonia in upstate New York," he says. "There's so much culture here, and it's a sophisticated city. Sophisticated people are not afraid to make choices."

On November 20, Cambria and Robertson had their first skirmish. Robertson was arguing a motion to exclude Cambria from the trial on the grounds that because he also represents major porn distributors, he won't be able to provide his client with unbiased advice.

Judge Humes Franklin Jr. asked Robertson no less than four times, "Where are your facts?" before ruling that Cambria can remain on the case.

Despite the setback, Robertson says he's not afraid of going toe-to-toe with his higher-profile opponent. "Mr. Cambria," he says, "is a top-flight attorney, and I look forward to it."

Cambria brushes off any notion that a jury, even in one of the reddest parts of a red state, could find After Hours' merchandise obscene.

"This is the typical male-female adult entertainment that can be seen on cable, satellite, or a computer," he says. "It's garden variety."

***

Whether garden variety porn equals obscenity in Staunton will be determined by a jury drawn from a pool with mixed opinions on the issue.

A petition presented at a November city council meeting contained over 3,000 signatures in favor of two anti-pornography ordinances. One required future adult businesses to apply with the city for a permit, and the other banned such businesses within 500 feet of "daycare centers, schools, churches, and residences." Both passed unanimously.

Much of the support came from the congregation of Calvary Assembly of God, located just around the bend from After Hours on Springhill Road.

"We're trying to reach out to the community spiritually," says Pastor Kevin Persinger, "and this goes totally against what we're trying to do."

Not only does Persinger object to the store being so close to his church, he also believes the store's out-of-the-way location will boost its sales.

"If you're going to have that kind of filth, it should be closer to other businesses where it's not as easy to slide in and out of there," he says.

Dowtown Staunton merchant Jan Landis, owner of 17 East Beverley Antiques, is a bit more ambivalent. While she concedes After Hours has a legal right to exist, it still seems part of a trend that's hard to swallow.

"There's just so much sexuality in our society that wasn't there 30 years ago, and it just seems like places like this lead people to want more and more of it," she says. "I remember 15 years ago seeing MTV and the video for that song 'Baby Got Back,' and I couldn't believe my eyes. Now, I suppose that's tame."

Unlike Persinger, she's glad about the store's distance from the commercial downtown center near her store.

"That's such a better location," she says. "Downtown is an old, Victorian destination, and I wouldn't think it would be appropriate here."

But a petition at After Hours' front counter boasts 1,600 signatures of its own at press time, and some local retailers doubt the wisdom of prosecuting porn.

"It's asinine," says David Fischer, owner of a small chain of music and video stores called Crossroads CDs and Tapes. "It's a waste of time. [Robertson]'s going to make the town look bad, and he's going to look like a fool."

Still, earlier this year, when Fischer heard about the growing tumult over the possibility of an adult video store, he stopped renting his small selection of X-rated DVDs in his Statler Boulevard store.

"We were more concerned about image than indictments," says Fischer. "If people are up in arms about it, I don't want to be a part of it."

Angie Berry knows the feeling. At celebrate!!, a downtown gift and card shop, she used to offer (behind a curtain in the back of the store) such bawdy items as phallic pasta, edible body lotions, and candy panties. Then what she calls a "small segment of the population" started complaining.

"None of it was pornographic in any sense," she says, "but I feel like the people who were most upset with it were also the most vocal, so we put some of it behind the counter. She adds, however, that "some of it is still sprinkled throughout the store."

Berry admits she got nervous when Robertson walked into her shop not long ago.

"My heart skipped a couple of beats," she says.

It turns out the prosecutor just wanted to buy a card for his sister. "I had to lead him past some of my 'butt cards,'" Berry says with a laugh. "I don't normally linger with customers, but being nervous about what's going on, I stayed with him all the way to the counter."

She says the flap over After Hours has made her consider going to After Hours Video to sign the petition, and perhaps even wage a bit of civil disobedience.

"We have a small room off to the side," she says. "After the first, we're going to take all that stuff you wouldn't want kids to see and convert it into a naughty room."

As for the emporium at the middle of the controversy, Krial and After Hours Video should have their day in court around the appropriate date of Valentine's Day 2008.Cashier Tom can't wait: "The more they write about us in the newspaper, and put us on TV, the better business gets," he says.

Staunton Commonwealth's Attorney Ray Robertson says that while he wouldn't bring obscenity charges against Hugh Hefner, he won't hesitate to "go after things that are just one wretched sex scene after the next."PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

Despite having had such big name clients as Larry Flynt and Marilyn Manson, attorney Paul Cambria (right) took the case of Rick Krial and After Hours Video because "an adult's ability to make a choice is on the line." PHOTO BY LINDSAY BARNES

As the owner of celebrate!!, a cards and gifts shop in downtown Staunton, Angie Berry caught flak from some of her neighbors for selling "butt cards."PHOTO BY LINDSAY BARNES